


i loved you first

by kakegoe



Series: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020 [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Defeat, Haikyuu Angst Week 2020, Light Angst, M/M, SemiShira - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27367861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kakegoe/pseuds/kakegoe
Summary: In a war for a fading lover, loving someone first does not always guarantee victory. Sometimes, the only end looming over your head is defeat. And by then, lower your armour, because there is little to no point in fighting a battle that has already been lost.
Relationships: Semi Eita & Shirabu Kenjirou, Semi Eita/Shirabu Kenjirou
Series: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1995268
Kudos: 11
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	i loved you first

**Author's Note:**

> third day (prompt: defeat) entry for #HaikyuuAngstWeek2020. inspired by joan's i loved you first.

To love with no hesitations—to run headfirst and dive deep with someone equally fearless, ready to rest with you in a series of lifetimes. There was an enchanting thing to it, and Shirabu, even in his full glory of logic and science, was lost in the magical headspace of love, discarding all rational thoughts, taking a leap of faith into forever with the perfect epitome of his everything, Semi Eita. Six years and no regrets. Six full years and you would think they have settled, sure of everything— _sure of each other._ But as indisputable as six years sounded, six years also meant exhaustion—an open road to dozens of fearful possibilities waiting on the horizon; _he’s tired, he’s bored, we’re bound to lose it._  
  
The thing was… _they_ did not lose it. Only Shirabu lost Semi, while Semi still had Shirabu.  
  
Six years thrown into question. Six full years of Semi teaching Shirabu the language of him and his love vanishing from the former’s eyes just like that, lost under the replace of a one-day haphazard meeting with a new person’s shadows. While time may have measured how many memories were made, it could never measure how much love there was. Maybe, in hindsight, only Shirabu loved, and Semi was just lost in the clouds of glorified infatuation, for if he truly loved the younger, he would have already realized that love meant no more butterflies, no more thrill and excitement, but comfort, warmth—just… _home._  
  
But Semi gave it up in the jading atmosphere of a constant.  
  
_“You’re not mine anymore…”_  
  
Shirabu felt it in the shifting gazes, once then on a Tuesday morning, gloomy skies looming over their shared apartment’s roof as if to sympathise with and prefigure a foreboding parting. He recognised the familiar honey brown eyes lose their soul, on his but not quite _his_ no more. He recognised the once burning candle slowly dying out. He recognised the continuous overflowing of his heart, while Semi’s had begun emptying.  
  
_You’re not mine anymore.  
  
“But I’m still a little bit yours.”_  
  
And even still, he let Semi go. He let his everything, his home, and his lover go, because there was that crucial point to battling a war only you were fighting for: knowing when you had already lost. And right then, when it dawned on him how he was a soldier alone in the battlegrounds, Shirabu slowly laid his armour down.  
  
_Defeat._  
  
Hand-in-hand through the course of the waves of eternity, but he felt Semi’s rough yet gentle ones slowly losing their grip. And Shirabu tried to hold on, to keep his grasp on a bleeding thorn, to put his eyes on the fading montage of a tragically beautiful story, thinking if he just upheld them a little while longer, Semi would eventually come back. _They would eventually be back._  
  
But Semi didn’t. And Shirabu was wrong.  
  
When that finally flashed before his very eyes, only then did he feel how tired he had gotten, fighting a battle where the only endgame was his absolute downfall. Shirabu loved Semi first, but he knew when he had lost. And he had lost completely.  
  
He forfeited six years.  
  
Much of how Semi forfeited refuge and breathers in his past lover’s haven of warm embrace for _butterflies_ and midnight getaways downtown, Shirabu withdrew from the bearer of the remnants of six wonderfully tragic years he had always, _and will always,_ treasure. He had given up the fighting will, ultimately standing down to silent cares and prayers. He was content like that.  
  
There was that often-neglected point to surrender: the heart’s rest. And while Shirabu had long yielded from Semi, he will never renounce his love.


End file.
